Retirement with No Problem

I saw it to the left, a tight turn under a rickety old bridge, very narrow, and made moreso by the now strengthening wind.  This was a joke!!  I very carefully steered No Problem down the narrowest of channels between boats round a couple of bends too, only to come to a stop at the end of ….. well nothing!  Yep nothing!

There was nobody about… an almost dilapidated area… no sanitary station, a mobile pump out cart was there, but didn’t look as if it had been operated for months…we couldn’t find water anywhere.  This was just the middle of a field!  There were some boats about… and eventually a chap came out of one of them, very cheery and helpful, pointing us in the direction of a tap!  Great, the hose will reach…. “Oh just tip the loo cassettes into the top of the pumpout cart”….. Sheeeeeeeesh, well OK then… great facilities eh?!

I let the washing machine finish it’s load before finally topping up the water and then the job of reversing back down the channel, twisting and turning as it went emerging in the end out to the Nene again!

“The farmer who owns the land has had a fall out with the owner of this site” said the chap…. “The owner has given us all notice to move out by May, there will be no Marina here after that” he went on.  He said though, that the farmer has said that he is happy for the few boats left to stay.. presumably he will leave the water point in, but the owner is taking everything off the site including the floating dry dock and all equipment all to be gone in a few weeks, so that is one to take off the lists of stops on the Nene!

He also said that the farmer owns one of the large lakes nearby, and is hoping to turn it into a large marina!  Well to be honest, for the number of boats along this stretch of the River, I doubt very much if it would ever be used!